


Games

by MaryPSue



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Metafiction, fluffy but not fluff, well technically both major character death and Death as a major character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:03:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I DON’T SUPPOSE I COULD INTEREST YOU IN A GAME OF CHESS…?</p>
<p>The look the person shaped like a young woman gives the skeleton is piercing. “You know that sort of stuff’s for gods.”</p>
<p>If the skeleton had had lungs, the gesture it makes would probably have been exhaling a sigh. I ONLY THOUGHT WE COULD USE SOME VARIETY.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Games

“Take you, f'rexample,” Albert says, as he unpacks the curry from the paper bag it came from the takeaway in, leaning over the little waxed-paper containers and taking a huge, appreciative sniff. “Have  _you_  got cats?”

The young woman - well, the person in the shape of a young woman - sitting at the table and watching with every sign of genuine interest as Albert opens container after container, shakes her head. Albert nods, as though a personal conspiracy theory has just been confirmed, and turns to rummage through the greasy cutlery drawer. “Thought not. I told ‘im, I sez, you go round picking up cats, next thing you know, you’re going soft again. Look at 'im now! Got a regular family tree!” He whirls, brandishing a fork, and adds, “Mind, nothing against Susan, but she’s got much too much of her father in 'er. Huh.  _Apprentices_. You don’t have an apprentice, do you?”

The young woman shakes her head again, her smile brilliant white against black lips. “Never saw any need for one. They don’t call us 'endless’ just because of how nicely it rolls off the tongue." 

Albert clicks his tongue against his teeth. "That’s what I told 'im too. Master, sez I, what d'you want an apprentice for? You planning to retire?” He falls into a fit of wheezing laughter at his own joke, and the young woman joins in, her laughter like church bells.

“Can’t say a word against it, though,” Albert says thoughtfully, when he finally catches his breath. “Anthropomorphic personofiwhatchamacallit or not, you could tell he was gettin’ lonely. And now? Happier'n a pig in sh- muck, miss. Can’t fault 'im that.”

“Definitely not.” The young woman pushes herself to her feet. “Do you think he’s ready for me now?”

Albert shrugs one shoulder, spearing the fork into a container full of something brown and lumpy and heavenly-smelling. “Can’t rightly say, miss. Depends on the  _cat_." 

…

They’re about halfway down the vast black hall that leads to the study, dwarfed by endless solemn pillars reaching up to echoing arches like the dome of the heavens impossibly far overhead, when Albert coughs into one arthritic, tobacco-stained fist and says, ” 'course, you never had an employee neither, did you?“

"No,” the person in the shape of a young woman agrees, mildly. She gazes around the hall like a tourist in a cathedral, the same easy familiarity with a setting designed to demand reverence, as though she might, at any moment, pull out a camera and start snapping pictures for the folks back home.

Albert coughs again, flecks of spittle catching in the rough stubble along his weathered chin, and bobs his head a few times as he walks, like a very elderly chicken who has narrowly and recently escaped an encounter with a deep-fryer. “Didn’t think so.”

They walk a few more steps, Albert’s footsteps ringing hollowly on the cold, inky marble of the floor. The quiet shushing sound of pouring sand rolls in to fill the silences between his steps. The young woman’s feet make no noise against the marble.

“Bit funny, when you think about it,” Albert says, at last. “You bein’ so much more personable when he’s had so many more…persons around.”

The person in the shape of a young woman smiles, though this time it doesn’t show her teeth.

“We’ve had different approaches to the job,” she says, after a few more steps.

Neither she nor Albert speak again until they come to the massive, multi-storey door that leads into the study. There’s something about the way the dark halls echo that makes one want to make as little noise as possible. Even Albert’s footsteps sound too loud, his heels tap-tapping like the tick of some enormous clock. He’s grateful to stop, just to silence the echoes.

The door is the same deep black as the floor and the pillars and the high arch of the ceiling. Albert finds he has trouble looking directly at any of the elaborate carvings that adorn it. He averts his eyes as he raps his knuckles against the frame. “Master? The young lady’s here to see you." 

From the other side of the door, a voice like words carved into lead, like trenches dug in the seafloor, like capital letters etched in stone, intones, DOWN. BAD KITTY.

There is a soft shuffling from inside the study, and the voice says, with a hint of sheepishness this time, COULD YOU POSSIBLY ASK HER TO WAIT A LITTLE LONGER? I’M AFRAID THIS ANIMAL IS NOT NEARLY SO WELL-TRAINED AS I WAS ADVISED.

"Did it pi- pee on anything, Master?” Albert asks, with a leery glance over at the young woman standing beside him, and the leaden voice interrupts him.

NO, NO, NOTHING LIKE THAT. IT IS MERELY -  _NO!_  I TOLD YOU, THAT IS  _NOT_  FOR CLIMBING!

The vast door slowly creaks open, just a crack. Albert sticks his head around it, to see a seven-foot skeleton in a black robe sitting folded in a rolling office chair that looks slightly too small for its frame, head in one boney hand, a large white cat perched like a parrot on its shoulder.

YOU MIGHT AS WELL SEND HER IN, ALBERT, the skeleton says, waving its free hand. I DO NOT THINK I CAN PERSUADE THE CAT TO MOVE.

“They’re more stubborn than lost souls, it’s true,” the young woman agrees, stepping into the study. Somehow it takes her longer than it should to reach the richly-coloured carpet just inside the threshold. “She’s beautiful. Where did you get her?”

The seven-foot skeleton shifts in its seat, lowering the hand hiding its eye sockets. Blue glints in their very deepest depths, faint as distant, dying stars. SHE WAS…A PARTING GIFT. FROM AN OLD FRIEND.

The young woman smiles, stepping forward and holding an alabaster hand up to the cat, which looks at it disdainfully. “Hello, you,” she says, then, with a glance back over her shoulder at the door, “Albert’s so jealous.”

_Meep_ , says the cat, with absurd feline dignity, and begins to wash her ears.

SHE IS… The skeleton seems to struggle for words for a long moment. SHE IS QUITE A PERSONALITY, it settles on. And then, with a note of concern, I HAVE NOT SEEN THE DEATH OF RATS FOR A LITTLE MORE THAN A WEEK.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s fine,” the young woman says, reaching up to scratch behind the cat’s ears with black-painted nails. “Not much eating on a skeleton. So what’re we playing?”

There’s a wistfully hopeful note in the skeleton’s voice as it says, I DON’T SUPPOSE I COULD INTEREST YOU IN A GAME OF CHESS…?

The look the person shaped like a young woman gives the skeleton is piercing. “You know that sort of stuff’s for gods.”

If the skeleton had had lungs, the gesture it makes would probably have been exhaling a sigh. I ONLY THOUGHT WE COULD USE SOME VARIETY.

“I like parcheesi.”

AT LEAST LET ME INSTRUCT YOU IN HOW TO PLAY CRIPPLE MR. ONION?

“You’ve tried to explain the rules to me the last four times I’ve been here. I think I actually know less about how to play than I did before you tried to teach me.”

YOU REALLY HAVE TO PLAY IT TO PICK IT UP.

…

The skeleton spreads its hand of cards out on the table, face-up.

The person shaped like a young woman huffs out a breath that ruffles her pouf of inky-black hair. She drops her cards on the table, shaking her head. “You win again.”

I TOLD YOU YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT TO PICK IT UP. If there’s a note of gloating in the skeleton’s voice, its posture betrays no such thing. 

The young woman looks at the cat, still perched on the skeleton’s shoulder and washing herself as though nothing has happened. “Did your friend teach you how to cheat like that?”

IT IS NOT CHEATING. 

“They’re almost all gone, now, aren’t they.”

The blue in the skeleton’s eyes flares as he fixes her with a flat gaze. THEIR NAMES ARE STILL SPOKEN.

The young woman nods thoughtfully. 

THAT IS THE COMPACT. THEY WILL NEVER DIE SO LONG AS THEIR NAMES ARE STILL SPOKEN. 

“You mean, so long as  _his_  name is still spoken?”

The blue fire dies away, tamped back to twin embers. 

NONE OF US WILL DIE AS LONG AS HIS NAME IS STILL SPOKEN.

The young woman nods again, stops herself. She smiles, but it’s small, her usual energy subdued. “I guess you win, fair and square." 

She pushes herself up from the ornate black armchair she’s been sitting in, walks around the table to flip the enormous hourglass standing at the skeleton’s elbow. A few grains of oddly-coloured sand - somewhere between green and lavender - rattle from the bottleneck between bulbs back down into the bottom bulb as she turns it over.

There is a moment of suspension before the sand starts to flow again, pouring now from a nearly-full bulb into a nearly-empty one.

"Same time next year, then?” the young woman asks, inspecting the four carven elephants the hourglass stands on, the tortoiseshell the elephants stand on in turn. 

I LOOK FORWARD TO TROUNCING YOU AGAIN.

The young woman flashes a brilliant smile at the skeleton, and leans over to give the cat on its shoulder another pet. The cat meeps and leans into the scratch she gives it behind its ears, shedding white fur all over her dark clothes.

ALBERT ALWAYS ORDERS TOO MUCH CURRY, the skeleton says, after a moment. WOULD YOU LIKE TO STAY FOR DINNER?

“Mm. I could teach you how to play a real card game,” the person shaped like a young woman says. When the skeleton gives her a stern look, she says, “We can play for pretzels.”

I’D LIKE THAT.


End file.
